


White fans: we need to talk about FEH Felix

by tastyweeds



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Essays, Racism, character essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29872281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastyweeds/pseuds/tastyweeds
Summary: Look. I love Three Houses Felix. I also find him problematic and complicated, because he’s a damaged guy with some sexism and racism issues that he needs to work out with other white people. Choosing him as the character to foist upon Dedue is already a Very Bad Idea. And then he opens his mouth.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	White fans: we need to talk about FEH Felix

**Author's Note:**

> 3/6 update: just got some terrible family news and turning off comments for a bit because I need to focus on my mom. I'm sorry.
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: RACISM. LOTS OF RACISM.
> 
> Let me be clear: I am writing this as a white person, for non-POC fandom, and specifically for non-POC fans of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Heroes. My lens as a white queer woman is limited, and I’m not speaking for anyone other than myself. Also, I love FE3H! This essay isn’t about making you feel bad for loving it, too. You can adore FE3H and also engage with it critically — in fact, your enthusiasm for Fire Emblem makes you a stronger advocate for change with the teams that create it. 
> 
> With that in mind, let’s dig in.
> 
> Huge thanks to mxmearcstapa for feedback and making this better on an insane time frame.
> 
> I also am firing this off in a fit of rage so typos and poorly written thoughts are on me.

**A quick bit about me**

In my late 30s, I’m practically an antiquity in some parts of the gaming world. I’m also not a traditional gamer; my family didn’t allow video games growing up, which meant by the time I hit college, I had no knowledge in or interest about them. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted my partner and I to pick up a Switch, and approximately 11 million hours later I was still playing Breath of the Wild and had become completely hooked. 

Then, on a whim, I searched for other story-driven games and picked up Three Houses. I started with the Blue Lions and fell hard for their narrative arcs, specifically the way that the Tragedy of Duscur shaped the lives of nearly every playable house student. 

Fast-forward a few months later, and the game changed my life for the better. I found a community of brilliant, funny, incredibly talented, racially diverse creators who enrich and expand my perspective time and time again. I also rediscovered the joy of writing when I’d long since given up (that’s an essay for another day) — in no small part because I wasn’t satisfied with the gaps in the relationships among Dedue and the Faerghus Four. 

**Three Houses and racism**

As a white person in communications, I’m aware of the tremendous power that words have to shape how we understand our world. When writers and creators world build without an equity lens, they risk reinforcing racist tropes that are legion in our white-dominant society, tropes that disproportionately harm gamers and creators of color who already have to fight for space in an industry that has an active legacy of racism.

Writers and artists of color have covered the issues with racism and misrepresentation in 3H far better than I ever could. Dedue’s arc is filled with extremely squicky narrative choices: the way that white characters dehumanize him without being challenged, the hamfisted way that he’s written into accepting and reinforcing said dehumanization himself, the white saviorism in his relationship with Dimitri (which, by the way, is a relationship I adore _and still view through a critical lens because it is flawed and needs to be engaged with)_.

While Ingrid’s supports with Dedue (and her overall writing/character) are the most glaringly problematic, Felix has long been a source of discomfort for me. When he calls Dedue a “dog” in the B-support, it’s racist, even if one believes that the writers didn’t intend it as such. The term is still a dog whistle harking back to the long history of white, western cultures otherizing Black and brown bodies by comparing them to animals. It strips Dedue of his agency, and then the game offers no opportunity for Dedue to reclaim it. Instead, Dedue essentially subscribes to the accusation, and there’s no space in the game for casual players to challenge the racism or even to consider the possibility that Dedue might be grappling with internalized racism because he’s had to adapt to survive in a white world _when his entire culture and identity were destroyed by white people._

In the context of 3H alone, it was possible for fans using a critical lens to grapple with Felix’s racist point of view, and many, many people spent their own time and effort creating art that gives the game team many opportunities to reflect on how character arcs, support conversations and localization choices could do better. It actually is not a lot to ask! Good luck pitching a show to network television where one character calls a POC genocide survivor a dog and another lists her dislike as “the people of Duscur.”

After more than a year of thoughtful engagement, the game developers, writers and translators have had countless opportunities to diversify their teams, seek external sensitivity reviewers or otherwise improve how they handle racism and genocide in future iterations of the characters. Indeed, when Heroes announced that Dedue had finally joined the ranks of 3H characters, long after the other two retainers arrived on scene, it was a moment of celebration. 

And then the Heroes banner dropped.

**What the hell happened in Heroes?**

In Heroes, there are “Forging Bonds” events with newly introduced characters that usually involve little support convos where you or other FE characters learn about the newbies. They tend to be light and airy dialogues, or they establish some shared understanding grounded in tragic backstories. 

What they don’t tend to do is double down on racism in ways that feel anything but accidental.

Dedue enters Heroes at a time when there are many existing FE3H characters in Askr who could be great Forging Bonds interactions. Dimitri and Sylvain are basically the white allies of the Blue Lions in the original game, and they’re both kicking it in Askr. (There are literally three Dimitris to choose from, intsys.) Mercedes and Annette are there and would gladly chat about gardening, cooking or anything else Dedue feels like covering.

Instead, we get Winter fucking Felix.

Look. I _love_ Felix. I also find him problematic and complicated because he’s a damaged guy with some sexism and racism issues that he needs to work out with other white people. Choosing him as the character to foist upon Dedue is already a Very Bad Idea. [And then he opens his mouth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sje7PdtgTZw). (content warning for video: VERY VERY RACIST)

/// cw: racist details after the line breaks ///

  
  
  


Here’s a brief list of the ways Felix refers to Dedue in the two sequences where he shows up in Forging Bonds:

  * “you cur”
  * “Dimitri’s lapdog”
  * “rabid dog”
  * “rabid animal”
  * “rabid dog” again (apparently Felix has also regressed to an incel gamergate vocabulary) 
  * just “dog”
  * “once a dog, always a dog”



For shits and giggles, he also tells Dedue that Dedue makes him sick, insinuates that anyone from Duscur is a mindless weapon and _literally says “I’m just tired of seeing you prance around with a leash in your mouth.”_

But don’t worry! Dedue fights back by…saying he understands where Felix is coming from and reminding us again that he’s just a weapon without a will. In fact, he actually takes an extra step and reinforces the accusation, embracing the dehumanization by claiming he’s not even a living being but a weapon. Perhaps — perhaps — he’s trying to challenge Felix by intimidating him, but if so it’s not done well in print, and the issue remains that the entire focus of their broader interaction is how Dedue is a dog, not a person.

And then Helbindi consoles Dedue by encouraging him not to focus on the past and saying “You don’t gotta feel inferior just for being from that Duscur place.” Friend, not the point we want to make here.

This is why in antiracism circles we talk about intention mattering less than impact. I do think that IntSys and Treehouse intended to use the Forging Bonds supports to emphasize that your future isn’t dictated by your past. However, by framing it the way they did, using the words they chose, with the characters they selected, IntSys and Treehouse’s actual impact is repeating and implicitly endorsing racist behaviors: the characters in the supports, including Dedue, accept Felix’s argument and more or less seem willing to believe that Duscur was a problematic place. It de-centers Dedue from his own story, again.

Is any of this funny? Does it shed new light on our characters? Has it added to the Fire Emblem universe? 

In all seriousness: Did the team fail this spectacularly by accident because they are so incredibly blind to real-world impacts of weaponizing language like this that not a single person in the writers’ (or translators’) rooms thinks to say “Hey this seems potentially terrible?” Or is this as slap-in-the-face as it feels? Like thumbing their noses at legitimate concerns by gamers of color and their allies because they don’t give a fuck as long as they keep raking in the dough?

I don’t even know which of those possibilities is worse anymore. All I know is that it feels like anyone who is a fan of either character has been kicked in the mouth by the creators. And I’m running out of teeth.

**But it’s just a game**

It’s not, though.

There’s a difference between complex, problematic, fundamentally flawed characters and characters who are just suddenly, violently racist and not held accountable or even challenged. There’s a difference between “Felix is someone we need to grapple with” and “Felix has just been written into a stereotype of a racist and I suddenly want to throw out everything I ever wrote about him” There’s a difference between “Dedue is struggling with internalized racism in order to survive, and he has his own deep, rich story” and “Dedue is a two-dimensional caricature of what people who have never experienced racism or oppression think you become if you experience those things I guess.”

If you still don’t get it, please scream at me, a white person, and not at anyone who identifies as a POC. If you genuinely do not understand how art interacts with and influences our perceptions and behavior in the world, I will do my best to talk with you. I grew up in a very white place, was absolutely a part of the problem on the regular when I was younger, and know damn well I am going to fuck up again — but we have to keep trying to do better because _this shit literally drives some people of color out of the fandom and is toxic for white consumers, too, and it has never, ever been okay._

**Now what?**

I can’t tell you what to do, but as someone who loves FE3H and also wants to challenge the parts that are problematic and even harmful, here’s what I’m doing.

  * I’m contacting the game and making a case to change the English localization AT MINIMUM. If they can patch stupid weapons errors and throw together new quests every flipping week, they can manage this.
    * Email: [fire-emblem-heroes-support@nintendo.co.jp](mailto:fire-emblem-heroes-support@nintendo.co.jp)
    * In-game: Misc > FAQ/Etc. > Customer Support > Feedback. You can send feedback regarding racist language in this Forging Bonds under “Characters.”
  * I’m [reaching out to Treehouse](https://nintendotreehouse.tumblr.com/ContactUs) to ask if they’d change the localization, because they’ve absolutely done so before (see below).
  * I deleted Heroes from my device. Money and numbers talk, and the more people who do, the higher the likelihood that someone will notice.
  * I’m doubling down on uplifting creators of color in the fandom. For me, this means:
    * amplifying their content
    * believing and support them when they say this shit hurts, even when (especially when) I don’t understand
    * taking any money I was going to put into Heroes and redirecting it towards POC creators’ ko-fis, patrons, indy shops, etc.



I’m revisiting again whether I am still engaging in behavior that reinforces the sense that FE3H fandom (and fandom more broadly) is for white fans only. As white fans, we automatically have a level of power and privilege that we can use to subvert white narratives and systems, but we HAVE to engage. We’re the only ones who can choose to escape when things get uncomfortable, and when we do that we only put our own comfort over the lived experiences of fellow gamers and creators who are beseeching us to do better.

There’s precedent for making changes. In Fates, there was a conversion therapy reference that’s Treehouse changed, in response to fan feedback. In 3H, I’ve heard they changed Hilda’s supports with Cyril to be less racist and offensive. And Treehouse did re-work Sylvain and Ingrid’s C support to remove a potential trans- and homo-phobic reference. They’re out there. They’re listening.

This is something we can do, and it’s something we need to do. 

I don’t want to quit gaming as soon as I begin. I’m not relinquishing a story I love and characters who resonate with me to the parts of the world that want to keep white systems in place. I’m hopeful that the game teams will hear us and make a change. Otherwise, they’ve just demonstrated that they’ll put profits before people — the people who make their jobs and industry successful — every time.


End file.
